A large number of business form constructions are so called "mailers". Mailers are used for a variety of purposes, ranging from conveying promotional items or materials to the intended recipient to providing variable information such as bills or invoices, academic grades, etc. to the addressee. In many of these types of usages, the original recipient or addressee may be called upon to return something to the person or organization making the original mailing. For example, in the case of promotional mailings, a response to the promotion is frequently sought from the recipient. In the cases of bills or invoices, payment of the invoice or billed amount is expected by return mail.
To meet the need for response to mailings, many mailers include a return mailer or envelope. The intended recipient opens the original mailing, completes a form, makes out a check, or the like, and places the form or check in a return envelope included as part of the original mailer. The return envelope is then deposited in the mail.
For the most part, mailers heretofore have been so called "continuous business forms" which is to say that they are a series of mailers formed of superimposed plies with individual form lengths defined by transverse lines of weakening extending across the plies. Typically, the mailing is processed in continuous form and then the individual form lengths are separated on the lines of weakening and deposited in the mail. Recently, however, so called "cut sheet" business forms have been increasingly employed in mailers. In a cut sheet mailer, the mailers are processed as individual sheets that have already been cut from a web or the like. That is to say, cut sheet business forms are just the opposite of continuous business forms in that they have been severed into individual form lengths prior to their processing.
In the case of current cut sheet return mailers, they typically include a cut sheet with a tipped or glued on "backer panel" which creates a return envelope pocket for the mailer. The addition of this backer panel to the cut sheet effectively doubles the thickness of the mailer because it is made up of two sheets paper, rather than one. This factor has limited the use of such mailers because two sheet or two ply thickness mailers are not easily fed, if they can be fed at all, through many non-impact printers now on the market because many such non-impact printers are specifically designed to feed but a single sheet of paper at a time.
As a consequence, the advantages of cut sheet mailers cannot be realized by owners of many non-impact printers or, if such non-impact printer owners attempt to utilize cut sheet mailers, substantial feeding and jamming problems typically result.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.